The more than 700 CEOs that responded to the survey clearly showed they are concerned with human capital, innovation, and internal processes and policies to position them to get ahead in a slow economy, as opposed to dealing with external factors such as global political or economic risk.

We analyze responses by region—Asia, United States, and Europe—and rank CEO strategies for meeting major challenges. The overall pattern in responses shows that to meet challenges, companies are looking to their people, but the differences in the way CEOs in discrete respondent groups approach these challenges are sometimes surprising.